Does the Tea Party Want to Win Elections?

Kevin Drum ponders what he calls a “timid” National Review article about the Tea Party by Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru. Drum agrees with L&P’s diagnosis that the Tea Party needs to appreciate the value of winning national elections if it wants to shape national policy, but raises this challenge:

OK, but how will conservatives win more elections? L&P explicitly disavow the notion of the party turning left, suggesting only that they’re skeptical of “the idea that moving in the opposite direction will in itself pay political dividends.” But if they have no concrete suggestionsâ€”either in policy or tone or messaging or somethingâ€”then this is just mush.

Well, maybe. But there is an alternative explanation. L&P are probably more in touch than is Drum (or me) with the pulse of Tea Party at the moment. L&P may have concluded that the alienation, rage and self-indulgence in that corner of the world are such that persuading Tea Partiers that elections matter is indeed a significant task of its own, much as it was with some leftist factions in the 1960s and 1970s. You can’t tell people how to do something that they don’t want to do in the first place. If you feel that the country is lost, that your values have been rejected and the entire system is corrupt, politics can become simply an outlet for rage. That may be the ledge the Tea Party is on, post-government-shut-down humiliation.

This same observation is germane to Andrew Sullivan’s otherwise compelling analysis of Chris Christie’s electability. It assumes that the Tea Party cares about winning elections, and therefore will embrace the big guy from Jersey. It used to be that the rightmost wing of the Republican Party always lined up for the establishment choice in the end, but maybe this time around they will simply be in the mood to express their fury via a Quixotic Cruzade for one of their own.